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Don’t Ban Smoking - Does Virginia Really Want To Be more Restrictive than Washington?

This article originally appeared in the DC Examiner on
February 16, 2005.

It’s hard to believe that a ban on smoking in public businesses
wafted through the Virginia legislature and actually was considered
at all. The Old Dominion is a state rich in history not only of the
cultivation of tobacco, but in producing such intemperate champions
of liberty and property rights as George Washington and Thomas
Jefferson.

The antismoking activists have been broadcasting detrimental
health effects associated with secondhand smoke. Those Centers For
Disease Control and Prevention statistics largely pertain to the
children of smokers, not to people exposed to smoke in pubs.

But even if those numbers were accurate, they shouldn’t matter.
Bans on public smoking aren’t an infringement only on the rights of
smokers, they’re an infringement on the rights of property
owners.

If I invest my own money or risk my own financial security by
taking out a loan to start up a pub or restaurant, I ought to be
able to serve my customers on my own terms. And my customers and
employees ought to be free to make their own decisions about the
risks they’re willing to undertake in exchange for service or
employment.

Smokefree D.C.’s J.P. Szymokowicz says that wait staff and
bartenders at establishments that allow smoking. They work there
because job they’ve chosen “pays well” or because “you can’t get
another job.” But that’s true of almost any job. You accept the
conditions of a given employer when you choose to work for him. And
you accept the general parameters of a line of work when you choose
to enter that field.

At any rate, Szymokowicz’s own organization lists more than 190
smoke-free restaurants in the District of Columbia alone, which
gives patrons, cooks and servers the genuine choice of whether they
want to work and eat around cigarette smoke.

Szymokowicz’s argument that he wants to impose his preferences
on the state of Virginia for the sake of bar and restaurant
employees also fails the smell test. Smoking bans tend to have a
minimal effect on large and chain restaurants. But when it comes to
smaller, more independent businesses — pubs, diners, bowling
alleys and the like — bans can be devastating.

Smoking bans mean fewer tips, lower wages and fewer jobs for
workers. Given the choice between enduring secondhand smoke on the
job and having no job at all, many cooks, bartenders and waitresses
would prefer the former.

Antismoking activists usually point to a few studies showing
some economic gain in New York City in the first years after its
smoking ban went into place. But there is a basic problem with
those numbers. New York’s ban went into effect shortly after Sept.
11, just as the hospitality industry was taking its biggest hit in
decades. Much of the rise in sales can be attributed to the return
of normal customer flow, not to customer eagerness to spend money
now that bars are smoke-free.

The District of Columbia became the first major city in the
country to turn back a smoking ban, thanks mostly to City Council
members’ respect for the property rights of local businesses. There
is no doubt this idea will come up again next year in Virginia.

Does Virginia really want to be more restrictive than Washington
when it comes to lawmakers imposing their own vision of healthy
living on the states’ restaurateurs, bar owners and
entrepreneurs?